The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. A near unanimous consensus to keep. (non-admin closure) Mkativerata (talk) 05:34, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Another Gospel (book)[edit]

Another Gospel (book) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)

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Not notable enough to merit its own article; also violates WP:NPOV to a possibly irredeemable extent Richwales (talk) 02:32, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Required reading at Regent College. Used as a reference at University of Pennsylvania. I will do some research on the subject, and work to further improve the article. AfD is not cleanup nor should AfD be a place to bring an article to cleanup claimed POV concerns. Cirt (talk) 03:19, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Meets notability requirements for books. I question NPOV claim. Are you referring to the article (don't see it) or the book itself? Turgan ^Talk 03:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy Keep: Changing to speedy keep as nominator has shown no reason for deleion other than a dislike for the subject of the article, not an issue with the article itself worthy of deletion. Turgan ^Talk 23:21, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: I'm not convinced yet regarding the notability; just because two universities have courses using this book doesn't seem enough. My main concern regarding WP:NPOV is that the book is a vehicle for advancing a specific version of the Christian faith, delivering negative value judgments on numerous other faiths with which "mainstream Christianity" disagrees. If this article is salvageable, I would propose it would need to discuss the background of the author's religious views, why the author's beliefs impel him to write negatively about what he considers to be "cults", outside critical reaction to the book, etc. That would seem to point toward expanding the subject to the point that this book would be more appropriately included in Wikipedia as a source in articles about evangelical Christianity, rather than being a separate article. Richwales (talk) 04:07, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. -- -SpacemanSpiff 04:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Richwales (talk · contribs) - Your nomination itself is considered a "delete" - there is no need for you to make a duplicate "delete", with bolded formatting. Cirt (talk) 04:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, my error, no intent to confuse. I've removed the bolded "delete" tag on my comment above. I still stand by the content of what I said, though. Richwales (talk) 15:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• How about a speedy keep and a month's worth of bacon for Cirt for their good work on the article? Bacon to be supplied by the nominator, of course. Drmies (talk) 04:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mmmmmmmmmmm... AfD discussion bacon....... Cirt (talk) 05:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy Keep how is this non-notable and POV? NPOV means to describe things as they are, without the influence of editorial POV - the same way we write articles about Nazism. If the subject is biased, it is okay to describe it in its original way - we are certainly not going to merge Nazism into Political ideology, are we? Blodance the Seeker 07:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Uhhh, are you saying that this book's treatment of Mormons, Christian Scientists, etc. is unbiased because they really are cults? Richwales (talk) 15:21, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The article's treatment of the book is unbiased. Whether the book itself is biased isn't relevant, otherwise Mein Kampf would be a redlink. WP:NPOV applies to articles, not the subjects of articles. Holly25 (talk) 16:10, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but you still don't get the point. The book may be biased. The article is not. And even if the subject of the article(i.e. the book) is biased, it doesn't automatically make the article "biased". For example, Nazism again(for a lack of better example I can think of, sorry if not appropriate) - Let's say Hitler claimed that "Aryan is the best race in the world", and now we are trying to put this into an article - in describing it, we can simply say "Hitler claims that Aryan is the best race in the world" - this is not biased. If you try to either support (e.g. saying "Aryan is the best race in the world" without attributing to him) or deny (e.g. "Hitler said that Aryan is the best race in the world, yet another nonsense") his claim, that would make the article biased. Hope the matter is clear now :) Cheers, Blodance the Seeker 16:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

At the very least, the article (in its current form) is heavily biased because it doesn't provide any clue to the reader regarding the POV nature of the book or of its thesis (namely, the tacit assumption that evangelical Christianity is true and authentic, and that other religions — even other Christian churches which diverge from the "mainstream" — are "cults" which believe and preach "another gospel"). An unbiased article would need to acknowledge the non-neutral POV of the author, the POV nature of the publisher (Zondervan), deal much more neutrally with comments like "biblical critique of the cults", address the POV nature of the book's title, etc., etc. Even if this issue can be adequately handled via a major cleanup of the existing page, I'm still not really convinced that there is a good enough argument to make this book notable and worthy of its own article (as opposed to dealing with it and similar so-called "anti-cult" or "anti-counterfeit" writings as a subsection of a more general article on evangelical or fundamentalist Protestantism). Richwales (talk) 17:33, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've just had a read through and the article in its current form nowhere uses the word "cult" to describe these groups except in direct quotes: even the intro adds terms such as "new religious movement" in order to avoid lumping in the following list of groups under the "cult" banner; "groups" is the term used from then on. It's perfectly neutral.

An article doesn't have to include criticisms of the subject in order to be neutral, unless those criticisms can be properly sourced and their insertion doesn't give undue weight to fringe views. What would not be neutral is if someone decides the work in question is biased and arranges the article to "show" the bias, when no such allegations of bias are represented in the secondary literature. The way to add criticisms to the article is to first locate some good sources for that criticism. Holly25 (talk) 18:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: The following excerpt from the back cover (as found in the book's page on Amazon.com) seems, to me, to clearly illustrate the view of the author in this book: Ruth Tucker’s overview illumines the personalities whose alleged revelations spawned historical heresies in all the major cults in the United States. She highlights important controversies within each movement as it aims for religious respectability. She pinpoints how the doctrines and practices of a dozen contemporary groups—as well as the New Age Movement—deviate from orthodox Christianity and shows how to reach out to cult members. At the very least, the current article fails WP:NPOV because it fails to even try to acknowledge the POV of the book. Also, I question the citing of this book being required reading at Regent College as being supportive of its notability, given the evangelical Protestant bias of Regent College. So I still believe this book fails the notability test — though I'm willing to concede that it may be possible to salvage its lack of NPOV via a major rewrite that does not tacitly accept a mainstream Protestant viewpoint. Richwales (talk) 19:22, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Richwales (talk · contribs) - Perhaps you should take some time to read the above comments by Blodance and Holly25. Cirt (talk) 20:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: I did read these comments — and I disagree with them — but in the interests of accomplishing something useful here, I'll tentatively agree to drop the NPOV element of my complaint in this forum, pending a good-faith effort (which I'm willing to participate in) to rectify the serious POV problems which I remain convinced exist in the current page. I still believe a page on this specific individual book is inappropriate for lack of notability, and I still favour its deletion on that basis (and/or the incorporation of its contents into a more general treatment of polemical literature within the evangelical Protestant community). Richwales (talk) 22:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

LOL, seems like a bit of overusage of the bolded Note formatting, over and over again... In any event, this can be discussed further at the article's talk page, but it still seems like Richwales (talk · contribs) has failed to point out any specific issues with the article itself (as opposed to his WP:IDONTLIKEIT concerns with the book). Cirt (talk) 22:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

With all possible respect here, I feel my concerns go beyond "I just don't like it". I will admit that I don't particularly like this book — as you can see from my user page, I'm LDS (Mormon), and this book directly attacks my set of beliefs — but I'm not going to object to an article about this or other polemic literature as long as the material is treated in a dispassionate, objective fashion that doesn't promote or put down any particular version of faith. In any case, though — as I said — I'm willing to drop this part of my objection to the page's existence in hopes of being able to make the page better. Richwales (talk) 23:41, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per the "subject of instruction at multiple ... post-graduate programs" clause at WP:BK, and the references made to it in other works. Alleged lack of NPOV isn't a deletion issue. Holly25 (talk) 22:45, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Several points.

• I was unable just now to confirm that Another Gospel is in fact being "used as a reference at the University of Pennsylvania". The online material I could find for the cited Penn course doesn't appear to mention this book. A more comprehensive source (e.g., a complete reading list for the course?) would probably help here.
• The online material for the course at Regent College does list Another Gospel — but it's buried near the end of a reading list of over 100 books — not what I would consider to fall into the category of "independent works deemed sufficiently significant to be the subject of study themselves, such as major works in philosophy, literature, or science" (note 5 at WP:BK).
• If I wanted to be picky (which I really won't in this situation, but whatever), I could point out that Penn is in the USA, and Regent College is in Canada, so these two examples aren't enough to satisfy the "in any particular country" part of the cited condition at WP:BK. I would propose that the best answer to this objection would be to find more programs which make genuine, substantive use of Another Gospel.
• I'm concerned that the other works cited as referring to Another Gospel may not represent exposure to a "general audience". Most of the cited works come from evangelical Protestant publishers (such as Zondervan, Moody, and Intervarsity). This isn't as bad as a fringe blog basing its claim to notability on links from other fringe blogs, but I think a conclusion of notability here ought to involve nontrivial citings of Another Gospel in a wider range of publications.

Richwales (talk) 00:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Richwales (talk · contribs) - You have a tendency of responding with long posts under almost every respondent to this discussion. Perhaps it is time for both of us to step back and allow others in the community to weigh in. Cirt (talk) 00:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There might not be an online reference for the UPenn course, but offline sources are perfectly acceptable (they just take more work to check).

The "independent works... sufficiently significant" note is used to disqualify textbooks and books written specifically for the course. "Major works" are given as examples, not as requirements.

The "any particular country" part is, as I read it, meant to be inclusive: we can't discount courses in obscure countries out of geographical snobbery. I don't think it means "they all have to be in the same country", I don't see what sense that would make.

I'm not sure that "general exposure" is the right standard to use here: it's definitely a specialist work, so we look to how it's cited within that specialist area. I see a reference from a university press (Sydney) and use in two mainstream university courses alongside the cites in books from evangelical publishers. The Christian Research Journal review puts the book at the top of its field, and although I'm sure you'll point out problems with their neutrality, their parent organization seems to have played a big role in the "Christian countercult movement", so their endorsement does carry weight when we're considering the work's significance within that specialist field. Holly25 (talk) 02:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment You can't get any info if you try to click the link University of Pennsylvania... it brings you to the WP article of Penn. Noted the "RELS133"? Try search "Penn RELS133" - it's a course number. I think the creator meant to say that the book is mentioned in the course content - the link I found was dead, though, so it shall prolly get removed for unverifiable. But even if the ref is removed, it is still a widely cited work and seems to have enough notability for inclusion. For the content of the article, as long as they are properly attributed, they are fine, no real need to portrait the author and/or publisher. Check Mein Kampf - we dont really need to say "a book by Adolf Hitler, the Nazi leader and the most evil mass murderer in human history". Some of the "POV" you mentioned was not even included in the article - how in the world can they make the article POV if they are not even in the article? I'm getting puzzled... Sorry, I don't mean to be all "I R TEH JASTIS", but this seems to me to be getting more and more like a blatant case of WP:IDONTLIKEIT... Blodance the Seeker 01:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Offline sources are fine, as long as they've been published in some form. Just a pain to check, especially if the only copies are in Pennsylvania... Holly25 (talk) 02:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. If you look at WP:BK, it lists 5 criteria for book notability, only one has to be met to establish notability, and this book meets at least two (#1 and #4). I haven't independently verified those claims, but unless proven false, this book is notable. As for the POV problems, I agree that the book is probably POV, but the article is not. If anyone thinks the article has problems, those can be fixed without deleting. – jaksmata 14:03, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep: Notable book from Zondervan. - Ret.Prof (talk) 16:51, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.